The Politics and Economics of a Decaying Order

What are the prospects for a new emancipatory politics that speaks to the needs of working people, at a time when the hardline neo-liberal leaderships of the Democrat and Republican parties and of the top financial and non-financial corporations have set themselves implacably against the populist and radical insurgencies that have recently shaken the American political order? Vivek Chibber will consider the political parties, organizations, mass movements, and ideologies – of both the right and the left – that are seeking to exploit the political openings that have emerged since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. He is the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013). Robert Brenner will trace the processes of American decline and global crisis that have driven the intensifying employers’ offensive and the profound plunge of mass living standards over the past four decades. He is the author of What’s Good for Goldman Sachs is Good for America (2009).

The speakers are the editors of the new political journal Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.

Speakers:

Robert Brenner Director, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History